Engineering by far, with at least a minor in Architecture. No Super-Villain in their right mind would let someone else design their impenetrable base of doom – look how it turned out for the Emperor in Star Wars.

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to set links in here for other sites, but that poor architect gets far too much stuff thrown at him for his work (In the first instance, I Presume the second one was a different case). Frankly, he was lucky he managed to get the exhaust ports that small, and the shot, as Dorkly managed to point out, was literally impossible if you didn’t have magic space wizard powers. He couldn’t have been informed, or wouldn’t have been informed, that magic space wizards were going to be a thing he had to think around, and even if he had, some other bullshit would have been done (Probably involving lots of dead bothans somehow) to counteract his countermeasures and the shot would have still landed

I’m of the mind that any true Mad Science education is gonna require at least a double major. After all, the whole point is to discover some novel information, and then exploit it for purposes of blackmail/control/whatever other evil scheme one might have.

Incidentally, I’m three years into my colleges Mad Scientist program, and I’m finding that where engineering mainly teaches you *how to do stuff*, neuroscience/biology mainly teaches you *what stuff is*.

(Of course, I’m going less for giant robots, more for cybernetic laser sharks)

What about laser dolphins? Fewer temper tantrums, less hostage loss through impatient laser shootings. Just lass problematic, although more prone to changing to lawful good, also more loyal, if properly fed.
Down side is- of course – not very threatening. Evil flipper has nothing on a sharknado or orca with grudge… Yeah, go with the sharks.

OOOOoohh! Bonus points: tourism $$$ positive cash flow, for the Win! Plus the odd tourist or curmudgeon falling into the tanks means less less chance of contracting food born illness for the staff who handle tending the sharks! Sounds like you have it planned out.

Do Sarnothi have movies? Or like their own brand of entertainment media in general? This seems to imply they can’t or at least haven’t been tapping into human broadcasts, even though they do have the technology to do the reverse.

They certainly have performance art of some sort. Plays and the like. However, I’m imagining that, with the severe social classifications of their culture, most of their entertainment in any form is very traditionalist- more along the lines of morality plays and re-tellings of their myths and religious stories. This is, of course, because that’s what supports the social structure, and it’s what everyone’s been raised on.

Engineering might be more suited to Selkie’s tastes (Mad science with robots!)
Though the reality of being a scientist isn’t as glamorous as it is in the movies (LOTS of hard work! …very little pay…)

Why so surprised that a Sarnothi can work outside their traditional roles? https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie401/
It was established LONG ago that the adults have very diverse jobs (though being all Tel’ Dora (the scholar and scientist clan) Pohl is a doctor, Sai Fen is an artist, and Then is a secret agent)

Te Fahn might not have the same interests as Selkie– but a movie night sounds like a great bonding experience! They should do it!

On the traditional roles thing…I think maybe Selkie is finding the division of skills among the clans more threatening than she did before, because hanging out with the new sarnothi kids is her first real experience with clan-based stereotyping.

Selkie and Te Fahn should definitely have a movie night! In addition, now I’m looking forward to a “Selkie’s Birthday Party” storyline that combines Te Fahn and Rahn and Amanda and Heather and Georgie and Sandy and all of Selkie’s friends in one place, with Grandma and Grandpa along for the ride.

(I know exploring all the interpersonal relationships is what makes the pace of this comic so glacial, but all the more reason to enjoy those interpersonal relationships, I say! Though, come to think of it…most of the major mysteries remaining are *also* about interpersonal relationships—where is Selkie’s mom and what is she doing, will Selkie ever know who her bio dad is, etc. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the Sarnothi Civil War to end in the time frame of the comic, because that’s now how these things work in real life.)

Depends on if her major ends up being Engineering or Biochemistry.
Well, what about both: giant killer cyborg lizards. Komodo Dragon with lasers! And chainsaw paws? Ninja Komondor or Puli with lock pick attachments? Poodle with a mohawk haircut? … And piercings?

Is it my imagination, or is Selkie actually trying to get the plurals right, here, but isn’t doing a very good job of it yet? There are a few words here I feel she would ordinarily have added an ‘s’ to, but doesn’t. But I can’t be sure, because I don’t have a solid set of rules in my head for how she had been doing it.

If so, good for Kin Ro, gaining Selkie’s trust and cooperation so quickly.

That’s funny, because I was thinking nearly the opposite! It looks to me like Selkie is dropping too many “over-pluralses” into this conversation, and I’m expecting Mrs. Tu’Daire to reorient them to the task at hand in the next strip or so. We shall see!

I’ve been wondering about the Sarnothi pluralization rules. I haven’t noticed any particular pattern to where they show up and don’t show up – they seem to be random. I could go back to the beginning of the comic again and take meticulous notes on where they occur, when I have time…

Man, can’t edit my own comment. Off the top of my head, the most recent example of apparent randomness to the pluralizing is Te Fahn’s “I’s sorry” (Selkie said this at the beginning of the story with “I’s a pretty one”), but on this page there are no pronouns, including Selkie’s “I wants to be a scientist,” that are pluralized. I feel like it’s grammatically strange to pluralize pronouns in the first place when they aren’t plural themselves or related to several other things (i.e. referring to multiple people (they) and/or a person in connection with multiple things).

On this same page neither Selkie nor Te Fahn pluralizes scientist, a noun, but on the page before Selkie pluralized “mind” in reference to a singular mind. There’s similar inconsistency with adjectives too. Maybe I’m just missing a complicated rule in reference to how the pluralized word affects the words around it? Now I’m really tempted to go back to the start and take notes.

Giant robots are a cool idea, but far too expensive to actually produce. What you really want are swarms of the smallest robots you can make, which then act in concert with each other. The tricky part is then figuring out how to control them without creating security vulnerabilities for others to exploit and take over your creations.

Then there’s the whole “internet of things” and “smart devices” where you trick people into letting you turn their household appliances into robots you designed… and the best part is they pay you to do it.

Wait, were we still talking about fictional “mad science” or real life engineering? It’s hard to stay on fictional topics when China unironically names their Skynet “Skynet”.

And then last week Google announced a weak apology for not informing people that the devices (like thermostats) had microphones in them, “we’re sorry we forgot to list the microphones on the list of features and on the spec sheets. We probably won’t turn them on without your knowledge… Certainly no one else would be able to turn them on, in theory, … We think hope